


I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it.

by adamparrishisbi



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, I'm Sorry, I'm just talking to you in the tags now wow, M/M, Misunderstandings, also I'm sorry if this never gets finished BECAUSE of trk, if you're attached to noah at all I'm sorry but this was my TRK theory, read this whilst you wait for TRK, referenced character death, so many, sorry not sorry for those parts, that's literally the plot, through BLLB because that's when this was written, you can read it now and it's not horribly incomplete I promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:10:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6679213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adamparrishisbi/pseuds/adamparrishisbi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So here Adam was, five years later and driving his shitbox car back across the country. He had already resigned himself to the fact that this was going to be a Long Ride, which was why he’d recorded the mix currently filling his tape deck with the help of an old tape recorder and his roommate’s best friend, who owned Adele’s entire discography. Because yes, it was going to be that kind of Long Ride."</p><p>What if Adam had left for college and a few miscommunications made him stay away. 5 years later he comes back and as much as he won't admit it, it isn't over for either of them.</p><p>Sadness, more sadness, shameless pynch, theories on Gansey's death that are maybe more accurate than I anticipated, and my own stress over college rolled into a really goddamn sad and over-researched fic I doubt I'll finish, but since TRK is out I think I need to at least post it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (If it's worth it for me to pick it back up after I read TRK let me know in the comments.)
> 
> Title from "Someone Like You" by Adele because I'm a sucker for song lyric titles and Adam is shamelessly screaming Adele as he drives through West Virginia.
> 
> EDIT AS OF 1.1.17:
> 
> OKAY SO FOREVER AGO I WROTE MORE THEN I READ TRK AND TRIED TO ADJUST THIS TO TRK CANON COMPLIANCE. 
> 
> I just figured out how to make this TRK canon compliant enough so now I am reuploading the extant chapters and adding another. Still incomplete, but hey look you get more content.
> 
> If you're a miserable soul who wants to read more of my writing and see the old preTRK version lmk and I'll give you a link to a desolate google doc of sadness. Stay tuned in chapter notes to see what comments I leave on my own writing.

It didn’t happen. They didn’t happen. 

 

Adam had to keep telling himself this because the alternative was to pretend that when he went back to Henrietta that summer things would be just like they were 5 years ago when he left. But it wasn’t high school and Ronan Lynch wasn’t going to kiss him at the senior prom, or after the Baccalaureate luncheon, or before walking arm and arm into the senior awards banquet, or any other dumb tradition Adam had to put on his slightly-too-small suit and borrow a bow tie for. No, and not after graduation either. (Where he was wearing his own tie, one Blue had made as a graduation gift. It wasn’t a bow tie.) Ronan Lynch who kept so many secrets that he wanted Adam to be one too, despite the fact that everyone knew there was something between them. The fall semester of his senior year Adam had been asked many times if he was dating Ronan, he thought when Ronan kissed him that it was also the beginning of a relationship. It was not. Seven months later when nothing had changed except the kissing (alone, always alone, never a visible sign of affection if even Gansey was present) and they were a week and a half from graduating Adam finally did the asking, and Ronan told him no. Not publicly at least, and that upset Adam more than bold faced rejection. The summer was tense. The quest for Glendower was done, Gansey was alive, but he wasn’t the same as before, wasn’t the kid who wore salmon colored polo shirts, who built a model of the town he lived in on his sleepless nights, had fallen into a dreamed cave, awoken ancient bones with the power of his voice alone, and slept on an old brass bed in the middle of the second floor of an abandoned manufacturing building, where he was the sunset crowned king of Henrietta, in an industrial penthouse that overlooked the rolling green valleys. No, not anymore. Not after October, and Glendower, and the deal, and Noah, and Cabeswater. Not after Blue had kissed him. Not after coming back from the dead for a second time and spending a week with Ronan, Blue, Adam, and silence, cleaning out the room where Noah had lived with them for two years. None of them were the same but Gansey had been the crux of their group friendship and he was most different. Blue was more distant that summer, and looking back Adam can see that the darkness of Gansey’s death had stained all of them, but especially Blue. It’s one thing to see one of your closest friends die, another to lose the boy who had been like a brother to you after already losing so much, and a third altogether to kiss someone on their dying breath, to feel their heart stop beating against your arm as you held them. Adam supposed that of the three who had lived through that day Blue had lost herself most. And while there was once  _ something _ between Adam and Ronan, since that summer there had been something  between Adam and Ronan, something preventing them from being close. The second half of the summer had been packing, and working extra shifts, and no-one being home at the same time ever, in an artificially imposed state of chaos so that the space next to Adam’s bed didn’t seem empty because it was filled with boxes, and Monmouth didn’t seem like a mausoleum where dead friendship and past lives were buried because no more than one person was ever there. Gansey was going to University of Pennsylvania in the fall, Blue had been accepted to the program in Costa Rica where she wanted to go, but after October she had a diploma, a magical car, and friends, but no time to line up scholarships to cover the cost, so she ended up taking business classes at Singer’s Falls Junior College after a year and a half of travel with Henry and Gansey. (And later moving back into 300 Fox Way with an AA in “Straightening up failed business practices of a bunch of psychics, who can see the future, but not that they need to market better.”) Adam left for the University of Washington at the beginning of August, as early as he could. 

 

The last night before he left Henrietta he drove to Monmouth to say goodbye. Gansey had left two weeks ago, and the two had joked about Gansey’s Ivy League school needed him sooner than Adam’s Public Ivy, although Gansey had deferred enrollment for a year. Monmouth held only one of her kings then, and as Adam drove into the lot by cover of darkness he almost missed the building, not used to seeing it dark, especially at only 9:30. He parked the Hondayota next to Ronan’s BMW and took the stairs two at a time before he wiggled the door to Monmouth open for the last time. The room was dark except for the streetlight's glow streaming through the huge art deco window, but there was barely anything for it to illuminate. Three boxes sat stacked in the furthest corner of the room, they hadn’t moved since October when the four of them had boxed up the things from Noah’s room. The other side that had been full of Gansey’s things now held the sharp black frame of Ronan’s bed, pulled to the middle of the living room, an echo of the past, Chainsaw’s open cage, and two large duffle bags that held all of the person Ronan Lynch was since his father died. The room was strangely large and strangely hollow without the mind of Richard Campbell Gansey III spread wild across every wall. Ronan was kneeling in the middle of the room looking down. With his head down Ronan Lynch looked small and vulnerable in a way he normally wasn’t. Adam wondered if he was praying, if he’d noticed when Adam had walked in, what he was praying to and who for. He leaned his head back and rose up on his knees, tossing himself out of the shadow, the blue-green light of the mercury vapor street lamp made him look venomous and unreal, the sharp lines of his face cast in an otherworldly glow. Adam shivered despite the summer warmth radiating from the bricks. Ronan stood up and ran a hand through his hair before turning around. It had grown out just a little, not even half an inch but in the strangeness of the hollow building Adam fixated on it. Ronan walked forward, barefoot and shirtless with his dark jeans low on his hips like they’d last been worn by a different person. He stopped a good 20 feet from Adam and pulled his jeans up a little, futilely.

“They’re the only thing I didn’t pack already.” Ronan said, which in this case meant “I’m sorry for June.”

“Is Gansey the one who…” Adam trailed the sentence off into a gesture where he pulled his fingertips up the back of his head and through his own hair, which in this case meant “I miss you, you know?”

“ Yeah. ” Ronan walked forward and leaned against a support column, for a moment he looked like something from a Calvin Klein ad, slick and alluringly dangerous, then he slid down the column until he was sitting with his legs folded up in front of him and arms folded on top of his knees. “ I used to have really thick hair, just tons of dark curls, it was ridiculous. Somewhere between if Matthew had brown hair and if Declan didn’t use so much damn hair gel. ” He let out a harsh laugh. “ I had my dad’s hair. People always said I looked like a spitting image of him as a kid. I was 15 when he died, just tall enough to look like a thin imposter of my dad every time I looked in the mirror. After we came home from the funeral Gansey pulled out the clippers, he said some shit about cultures where you shaved your head after a loved one’s death and mourned until your hair grew back, and others where your hair was synonymous with your spirit, and you cut it in mourning. I think he just knew that I couldn’t stand looking in the mirror and seeing a ghost staring back. Every Sunday Gansey buzzed it again. ” Adam had moved to sitting in front of Ronan as he spoke.

“Did Gansey leave the clippers?” Adam replied instead of saying “I’m sorry” or “I miss Gansey too” or “I don’t look a thing like my parents”, “I’m just hoping I don’t grow up into my father”, or something dumb and honest, like “I love you.” Instead of saying “me too” Ronan stayed silent. He walked one of the duffles and pulled out a slim black clipper, which he tossed Adam’s way. And instead of asking Ronan the same question he’d asked in June, Adam asked

“Electric or battery?” To which, instead of telling Adam no again, Ronan replied

“ Dream, ” before crossing the room and sitting, hands on the window frame, looking out across Henrietta. Adam was struck with the thought that if he ever wondered if the Greywaren was something fey, the iron frame Ronan’s hands gripped would dispel that. 

“There’s just the one comb right? Same all over?” Adam asked as he switched on the clippers. Ronan nodded. “What do you see out there?” Adam pulled the clippers across the back of Ronan’s head. He closed his eyes before answering.

“ Ghosts. The whole damn city is haunted. No one died here, but everyone’s haunting it. ” Adam looked out the window and across the valley of upper Henrietta, winding streets of assorted buildings increasing in grandeur as they spiralled in towards Aglionby all glowing green and sick under the mercury bulb. This city was his birthplace, his damnation, his salvation, and a place he would never truly belong in, or out of. All at once, and he could feel the eyes of God boring into him as he locked eyes with the faraway lights of Aglionby’s dorms. He pulled the clippers in another stripe along Ronan's head. Adam could feel heat radiating off of Ronan's body from their proximity. Ronan leaned back and hummed lightly as little pieces of dark hair fell around him. Moments passed like eons through the weight of the silent room. Adam ran his hand across Ronan’s head, short hair like velvet under his fingertips. Adam brushed his fingers around Ronan's ears, and down the back of Ronan's neck. Ronan hummed again as Adam let his hands linger. A bird landed on the window sill in front of them, staring Ronan in the eye with its head cocked to the right. 

“Corvus brachyrhynchos” Adam said softly. The bird crowed, loudly and nasally.

“It’s a fucking fish crow.” Ronan corrected. The fish crow flew off.

“I didn’t think they stayed this far west?” 

“ American crows stay year round, Fish crows wander in sometimes. It’s August. ” 

“Wow do all the Freshmen at Aglionby get subjected to rigorous courses in corvids?” Adam said in mock surprise that twisted the somber atmosphere and turning it into something tense, but easy in the same way the last year and a half of interaction between the two had been. Adam sat down next to Ronan and sighed. 

“When are you leaving?” Adam asked the darkness. The darkness replied.

“ About a week. As soon as Blue is packed up. She’s still trying to figure out how much of her life to bring with us. ” Adam felt Ronan’s shrug more than saw it.

“And are you planning on doing anything once you get home, or…” Adam trailed off. The truth isn’t real if you don't speak it aloud. 

“ I’ve got a whole herd of cattle to re-dream. And I should probably learn a less destructive way of talking to dreams. Do you think Calla will teach me how to scry? ” Ronan laughed, shallow and dark. 

“I don't know man, she's pretty scary, and scrying in general is pretty scary. Maura might show you how to use a tarot deck though.” There was something strangely comforting in the silence between them, something Adam hadn’t had a chance to miss since the last time Ronan had slept in the apartment above St. Agnes. Somehow even as the seconds ticked on he was aware that this was the end of time like this, that it was an echo of the past, one final goodbye, and no matter how it ended, tonight was the last time they would ever have this. The night rolled into the next day, announced by the tinny chirp of the old wall clock that had predated Gansey’s time in Monmouth, and was too high on the wall to be adjusted ever, which left it an hour off from November to March. Adam stood, and straightened his shoulders, before walking to the door. He paused and turned around to face Ronan, who had himself stood, and was now backlit with a green-blue halo from the streetlight, he wore the sickening glow as a crown, and in a dark room the complaint of lamps that made people look like "bloodless corpses" rang true. Adam took a moment to look at Ronan, to memorize this picture: Ronan Lynch, the boy with a shaved head and long eyelashes resting against the top of his high and wide cheekbones, with green light pouring from around him, cut along his sharp nose, his lips, his jaw, shoulders softly sloping into an apology, feet planted firmly in the ground and readied for battle. He raised his head when Adam spoke.

“Should I come back at Christmas?” Adam curled his hands into his pockets and forced himself to lock eyes with Ronan as the question hung in the air like the first half of a promise, waiting for an answer, carrying as much weight as Adam’s tongue was capable of pressing into six words,  which actually meant seven, “will you love me in 5 months?”

“ No .” Ronan stared straight at Adam, and pressed his lips into a thin line. No smile, no war. Adam turned through the doorway. He calmly walked down the steps with the door creaking back and forth on open hinges, and not so much as a footstep from Ronan. He left the front door open too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy fuck so I edited this to be TRK compliant and as a reward for anyone who is rereading this for a sum total of like 5 parts changed and "April" swapped for "October" many times I give you a list of comments I left on my own fucking google doc writing this
> 
> -Proud of this line. Ha I have no shame jk all I am is shame  
> -"Replace: ““Corvus ossifragus. Fish crow.”” with ““It’s a fucking fish crow.””" "WHICH ONE DO I USE???"  
> -(In reference to Cabeswater not being killed by overtaxation) WELL TOO DAMN LATE NOW HOW DO I FIX THIS PARAGRAPH?  
> -MAGIC CLOCK? MAGIC BATTERIES? I DON't FUCKING KNOW HOW CLOCKS WORK  
> -I don't agree with Slytherin!Adam but damn if I won't use it to my advantage in writing
> 
> Stay tuned for more of me yelling at myself to write fic well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No changes were made to this chapter but I do have this gem as I tried to pick up and finish an orphaned work
> 
> "WHAT DID I PUT IN THE GLOVEBOX I FORGOT????? WERE THEY POLAROIDS? MAGAZINE CLIPPINGS? UNMENTIONABLE THINGS?" 
> 
> and the subsequent text to a friend 
> 
> "I'LL NEVER FUCKING FINISH THIS BECAUSE I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE FUCK MY PLOT ACTUALLY WAS."

So here Adam was, five years later and driving his shitbox car back across the country. He had already resigned himself to the fact that this was going to be a Long Ride, which was why he’d recorded the mix currently filling his tape deck with the help of an old tape recorder and his roommate’s best friend, who owned Adele’s entire discography. Because yes, it was going to be that kind of Long Ride. It wasn’t until he was outside of Charleston that he switched from radio surfing to the actual tapes. There was no way he wouldn’t turn it to Gansey’s favorite classic rock station once he was in range if the radio was still playing. Adam pressed play on “Daydreamer” and started humming along. Sometime around “Hometown Glory” the humming had turned into singing harmonies as he drove down torn up interstates.

 _Round my hometown, memories are fresh_  
_Round my hometown, oh the people I've met_  
_Are the wonders of my world_

By the time Adam hit Princeton, he wasn’t so much singing as screaming “Someone Like You” and yes, the windows were down, it was June and the Hondayota didn’t have working A/C. It wasn’t really an issue until he was at a red light trying to get to the I-77 on his second repeat and the lady in the car next to him rolled down her window to ask if he was okay. There were absolutely not tears on his face and there was absolutely no reason why he would be crying about the pre-chorus of an Adele song in the first place.

 _I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited_  
_But I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it._  
_I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded_  
_That for me it isn't over._

As Adam drove into Henrietta “When We Were Young” started playing. When he parked on the street in front of 300 Fox Way Blue walked out and sat in the passenger seat next to him. She turned down the volume dial and turned off the radio, clipping the final verse.  
“Okay I’m not going to ask, but I am going to tell you that I remember where you keep napkins in this car and I’m going to start in with Mom Mode if you don’t clean up the tears before Orla gets bored with waiting for you to come inside and comes out here to seduce you out of the car.” She looked pointedly at him, in a way that he had missed more than he knew in the past 5 years. There are things that change with time that you don’t pick up on with just monthly calls. Her voice and mannerisms were familiar, but the girl in his passenger seat was almost a stranger. Blue Sargent had grown up into a polished and sleek version of the teenager she’d been, without losing anything that defined her. Her choppy hair with a million clips was now a spiky pixie cut, and layers of fishnets and shredded tulle had been replaced by brightly colored and horribly clashing separates, blue chinos, an aggressively yellow tank top, and a light weight cardigan in an offensive shade of pinkish orange that probably matched a Gansey Polo™ combined with what was a very Calla shade of purple lipstick, it made her look like she’d just stepped out of an Andy Warhol painting. Her nails were still painted black, however, and they were presently reaching for the glovebox to search for napkins. Apparently Adam had taken too long reminiscing for her taste.  
“No! I’ve got it, please, don’t open the glovebox, there are tissues over here.” This was not a good thing to say, as Blue’s curiosity had only been piqued. She raised an eyebrow but left the glovebox alone.  
“We’re going to have a long talk tonight.” She said before slipping out the passenger side door and walking to where Orla was just walking out of the front door.

 _Let me photograph you in this light, in case it is the last time_  
_That we might be exactly like we were_  
_Before we realized, we were sad of getting old_  
_It made us restless, I'm so mad I'm getting old_  
_It makes me reckless_  
_It was just like a movie, It was just like a song_  
_When we were young_


	3. Chapter 3

There were a few more empty rooms at 300 Fox Way then there were when Adam had last been there, the walls had all been repainted, and most of the furniture was different, but it still felt unmistakably like the place it where legends had been born and dead Welsh kings had run. The table in the reading room was the same, the double mirrors upstairs still stood resolute and silent, and most of the attic hadn’t changed, Gwenllian’s things were moved out but only dust was added. 

“We cleaned most of it out but didn’t really redecorate or repaint it, everything there is hers, but there’s no personal things still left.” Blue said by way of introduction as she walked towards the door to the room that once belonged to Persephone Poldoma. “Thought you’d rather sleep here than some random room that smells like one of Jimi’s herbal scrubs.” She laughed a little at that, opened the door, and left Adam to put down his things. 

The room didn’t look exactly the same as before, it wasn’t a mausoleum or a shrine, but the walls hadn’t been changed except for the clearing off of the corkboard over the desk. Her bookshelf was still fully populated, her handmade quilt was on the bed, now turned a different direction for easier access, and though the closet and desk had mostly been emptied out there were still a couple old pamphlets, blankets, and assorted things around the room that marked it as still Persephone’s. It wasn’t denial that she had died, or locked in time at the moment of her death, but it was a silent and respectful tribute. Adam felt simultaneously at ease and uncomfortable with the situation, so he opted for trying to open a window instead. 

 

_ “What do you see out there?”  _

_ “Ghosts. The whole damn city is haunted.”  _

Dinner at 300 Fox Way had always been an incredibly loud and impersonal affair. Adam went downstairs for a sandwich an hour before, and then cited adjustment to the change in time zones as his reasoning in the hopes of avoiding excessive interaction and Blue’s inevitable “talk.” It didn’t work, and at half past 8, there was a gentle knock on the door. Adam was a fan of ignoring the problem until it went away, but Blue was persistent, so the next round of knocks was accompanied by a soft “I know you’re awake asshole, there’s no way someone I caught crying to Adele earlier today is asleep before 9 p.m.” A second later she had opened the door and walked in. “Okay what’s going on? It’s been five years Adam it’s okay to have a human emotion about this. What isn’t okay is hiding from me, everyone, and yourself.” Adam didn’t think he’d been hiding specifically, but this wasn’t Washington, and most of the people he’d seen in the last few hours here were infinitely closer to him even now than the five or six people he talked to in Seattle. 

“Okay I’m going to leave the whole crying, hiding, Adele bit alone for now, because you’re staring at the desk like you just ran over its cat and you’re very sorry, and that’s not going to get anyone anywhere good. Come downstairs and eat some spaghetti.” Adam looked up, and for a moment in the soft lamplight of this room, a pale shadow of childhood, just grown up enough to be different, he had no trouble remembering why he loved her once. The soft smile on her face and the kind look in her eyes was the same as the girl who talked to him that first night by the bike rack behind Nino’s.

“I’ve already eaten,” was all he said though. Blue gave him a pointed look.

“You ate a sandwich. Sandwiches do not constitute dinner. How long has it been since the last time you ate an actual hot meal?” Adam stood up and followed her to the kitchen.

 

***

 

Adam was on his second bowl of spaghetti, and Blue had organized, reorganized, and re-reorganized the silverware drawer she had sitting in front of her when she finally spoke. 

“So what’s in the glovebox?” Adam dropped his fork halfway to his mouth and it clattered against his spoon and knocked both to the floor. 

“That bad huh? I figured that was a good place to start unpacking whatever is going on.” Adam picked up the spilled cutlery and wiped away the droplets of spaghetti sauce that had sprayed the kitchen. 

“Do you remember how I used to keep magazine clippings in there,” he started. Blue nodded, the silence stretched on too long for a standard pause. “And that old camera I had in high school?” Adam turned around to face her.

“The old polaroid we found at the thrift store?”

“With the frankly ridiculous stockpile of film.”

“Yeah, that was a great camera for a five dollar find” 

“I still have the camera actually, it’s been in that duffle bag since high school. I used the last roll of film after graduation.” Adam turned back around to the sink and started washing off the fork and spoon.

“What does that have to do with the magazine clippings?” Blue had stopped shuffling cutlery and the kitchen was nearly silent. A hazy shadow of night had covered the windows, and the soft yellow bulb in the kitchen was the only light in the room.

“I had enough film for 500 pictures, about 350 of them turned out okay. A few were packed in Noah’s stuff, most got hung up around Monmouth and I’m assuming Gansey took them, some were pinned in Ronan’s room so I’m assuming they were burned, and I think I gave a couple to you?”

“Yeah I have five of them in my room, they’ve aged pretty well too.”

“And the rest stayed in a box under my bed until I left. Most of them were of ley line related things, or of us as a group or a couple of us together, and I mailed those to Mallory, at the time that I left Henrietta I wanted to leave it all behind.” Adam walked back to the table and sat down across from Blue again. “He sent a very long letter back thanking me. I couldn’t read all of the handwriting but the basic gist was that he had Gansey at his worst, and it was good to see that there were happy days before and after the whole… you know. Also the ley line documentation was helpful.” Adam paused for a minute to order what he was about to say in a coherent fashion. “There are nine of Ronan that I kept. They replaced the magazine clippings in my glovebox.” Blue’s eyes softened and she set down the silverware tray.

“Adam.” somehow his name held so many answered questions he couldn’t sort them apart to address them. “It’s been five years. You haven’t spoken to him for five years.” Blue always included an update on Ronan in the monthly phone calls, it had began when they were living together at the Barns, but had continued after Blue was back in Henrietta. No matter how hard he had tried it had been entirely impossible to exorcise Ronan from his life, so the pictures in the glovebox stayed. It felt pointless to pretend they didn’t belong there, a picture of Ronan’s deadly smile with Chainsaw perched on his shoulder and icy eyes staring into the camera was just as much inspiration as a model with an upturned nose leaning against a sleek German car, and the rare snapshot of Ronan laughing was still something he had fought hard for, something it took months to win, and something part of him still wanted to win back. The rest of Adam was annoyed by that part, but he couldn’t tell if it was the emotion or the subject of it that was bothersome.

“Time is not the problem. If I was someone else I would have burned them the night I left here.”  _ But I’m not  _ hung in the air, unsaid, unreal. Blue put the silverware drawer back where it came from and walked across the kitchen to the stairs. She told the darkness,

“He asks about you every time I call. The only person I know who would have set that on fire was Kavinsky, and there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t burn.” The darkness turned off the faucet and said nothing. Blue went back to bed, and Adam washed off his plate. As the dark dish filled with water Adam saw himself in the water’s reflection.  _ He hadn’t scryed since he was last in Henrietta. _ He dumped the water out of the dish.  _ And he had no reason to do it now.  _

  
_ “I couldn’t stand looking in the mirror and seeing a ghost staring back.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY. HAPPY NEW YEAR
> 
> Highlights from the Editing Process™
> 
> \- "Selected text:  
> "Adam felt simultaneously at ease and uncomfortable with the situation, so he opted for trying to open a window  
> instead."  
> #soml"  
> -Adam having a human emotion and acknowledging that's okay is laughable  
> -"Sandwiches do not constitute dinner" oh boy you can tell I was in high school when I wrote this. A stale package of M&Ms constitutes dinner if you're busy enough.  
> -We discover the Glovebox Contents (my new punk band)  
> -Never search a word in your writing you'll hate yourself and pasta  
> -Blue's Long Talk was like "so how's moving on going" "I see you're still an unstable wreck good to know college helped your personality and ways of dealing with life in literally no way whatsoever, that's new."


End file.
